Remember this guy? It’s Denis Nedry, the grossly underpaid computer programmer who designed Jurassic Park’s computer systems.
I am totally unappreciated in my time. You can run this whole park from this room with minimal staff for up to 3 days. You think that kind of automation is easy? Or cheap? You know anybody who can network 8 connection machines and debug 2 million lines of code for what I bid for this job? Because if he can I’d like to see him try.
And here’s his boss, John “Spared No Expense” Hammond, who pumped $850 million into his personal pet project but decided—when it came to hiring computer programmers to program, debug, and ultimately run his automated park for him—to go the cheap route.
Hammond launched a bidding war for computer programmers. Nedry bid the lowest and won the job. But Nedry didn’t know a lot about what he was actually getting into due to how secret Hammond and Ingen kept everything. In the novel, he was actually lied to about the scope of the project… It’s one thing to program a petting zoo. It’s quite another thing to program a den of unpredictable, flesh-eating dinosaurs resurrected from extinction. The stakes are rather high with the latter kind of gig.
Upon realizing just how much work was involved—and doing a fantastic job at said work I may add— Nedry began asking Hammond for more money. But Hammond spared himself such an expense by throwing it back at Nedry, claiming he’s the one who made the mistake by bidding so low for the position, and to make do with the agreed upon terms of the contract. Nedry subsequently became very disgruntled.
Now, it could be reasoned that Nedry is manipulative, untrustworthy, and a slob. Not to mention a criminal. Maybe Hammond has a point sticking to his guns here. Maybe Nedry is lucky to have a job at all. But lives are in Nedry’s hands. Could it hurt to throw him a bone to make him feel appreciated? A bonus? Talks of a raise after 12 months? Stock options? Something?
Doing something on the scale of what Nedry did would easily be worth millions of dollars. Yet we know he wasn’t paid anywhere near that. He was paid chump change.
This is why he so readily accepts a bribe from BioSyn to steal dinosaur embryos, which ends up causing a string of disasters that lead to dinosaurs escaping their confinements, and lives being lost. Jurassic Park never even opened.
If only John Hammond had lived up to his own motto.